


I'll lay flowers on your grave, but they won't grow without you

by TheMikeWheelers (jasongracefully)



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, F/M, death tw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-23
Updated: 2017-04-23
Packaged: 2018-10-22 20:31:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10704555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jasongracefully/pseuds/TheMikeWheelers
Summary: That meadow was never meant to be a graveyard. When 8-year-old Nancy found it, it was just a place to play. She used her imagination to see it as a castle, a courtyard, a ballroom, but never a graveyard.





	I'll lay flowers on your grave, but they won't grow without you

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this as a part of the Writer's Guild Death Day, I suggest you check out everyone else's amazing fics for this as well :)

When Nancy was younger, she used to help her mother with gardening every spring. Karen would spend hours outside, watering and tending to her flowers, and Nancy watched as they would blossom.

She saw the flowers just began to sprout, then they would grow and grow until they were as beautiful as could be, then one day they just died. Maybe someone stepped on them, or an animal came and ate them, or maybe it was just their time. It didn't matter why it happened, but Nancy had grown accustomed to watching it. 

She watched as her mother would kneel over in the soil, working away on the plants. There wasn't anything beautiful about the dirt stains on Karen's clothes, or the long hours in the draining sun, but the flowers were beautiful, and Karen didn't mind getting a little dirty so that they could grow.

That's how Nancy felt now. She had gotten dirty in this, she put everything inside her into this flower, but even still, it died just like the rest. She watched as Steve Harrington grew and blossomed, only for him to die and leave her alone there in the dirt.

Nancy always loved flowers. When she was 8 years old, she spent almost every day at the park with Barb. One day she decided to venture through the thick trees on the park border, heading into the mysterious woods. That's what everyone had told her at least, that past the trees there was nothing but forest for God knows how far.

But curiosity still got the better of her, so she apprehensively headed into the trees. When she had walked for a few minutes, she had stumbled upon a hidden treasure. With a gasp she ran back to the park to tell Barb about all she had found. 

The meadow with the flowers was shielded from the rest of the world, the trees kept it hidden. As far as Nancy knew, she and Barb were the only people to ever go there, to enjoy its beauty, with hundreds of wildflowers growing all around. Her and Barb spent hours playing in the field there, dancing in the flowers where it felt like nothing in the world could go wrong. 

November was around the time all the flowers began to die for the winter, wilting away until there was nothing left. Nancy would watch as November came every year and took the flowers from her. By 1983, it had been years since her and Barb had last played in this meadow, but they would both still visit from time to time. A place with so much beauty and love couldn't just be forgotten. Though their time of pretending to be princesses in their castles made of dandelions was over, that didn't mean the fairytale had to stop completely. 

The flowers would go every November, but they would always come back in the spring, as if they had returned just for Nancy. 

Then the harsh November of 1983 took more than just the flowers from her, it took her best friend. Nancy couldn't help but feel denial when Barb went missing. She wasn't dead, she was just with the flowers. The winter had taken her away, and she'd be back to blossom again in a few months. She had to be, because there's no way she could just _die_ like that. 

But then spring came back, and the flowers bloomed once more, and still, Barb was gone. Nancy didn't want to accept it, but she was beginning to realize, Barb didn't just disappear like the flowers, taken for a few months only to be whisked back when the snow melted. She was really gone. 

So Nancy had showed her special meadow to someone new for the first time since she was 8 years old. Steve Harrington was the opposite of the flowers. Instead of wilting away in November, he came into her life for the harsh winter. He wasn't only there when the sun was out and the weather was nice, he was there for her when Barb disappeared, when her brother would barely talk to anyone, when her mother just wouldn't understand anything that had happened last November. Steve was there through all the most brutal parts of that winter. 

No one accepted that Barb was really dead. There wasn't any proof she died, because the only evidence was a decayed body deep inside the Upside Down. Nancy wondered if there were any flowers there. The place was supposed to be an echo of their world, so where were all the flowers? Were there any meadows or gardens there in that place of death? 

She hoped so, at least. She hoped more than anything that Barb had some beauty down there. 

Since no one really believed Barb died, she never got a funeral. The town insisted the girl had just ran away. Nancy wished she had, she wished that Barb had just ran off to Indianapolis, and was now living a better life than this small town, with all its secrets. 

It was Steve's idea to throw the funeral. Deep in the corner of the meadow, they placed a rock for a headstone, and had their own ceremony. Nancy would visit the grave from time to time, and saw how the flowers blossomed around the stone. It wasn't a real funeral, and it wasn't the kind of goodbye Barb deserved, but it was all Nancy could do. She figured Barb would appreciate it.

Then as the flowers grew back, life went on. Nancy threw herself into school, and spent time with Steve. Coping wasn't easy, but she had someone to get her through it.

Fall came again, and the flowers started to die down. Nancy knew once the winter came she wouldn't be able to visit much anymore, but still, she wanted to go while she could. She knew the flowers would die, but she naively thought they would be the only death.

Then the monster came back, well, it was a different monster this time, but to Nancy it wasn't all that different. It came from _that place_ that the other one did, and she couldn't help but go after it. That place had taken too much from her, from her friends, from her family. She'd kill every monster from there if she had to. 

Nancy never thought about the risks of getting involved, it was always her first impulse, she didn't question how dangerous it could really be. She didn't stop to think she could be hurting herself, or worse, hurting the people she cared about. 

The Thessalhydra made no hesitations in slamming Steve across the woods with its tail. Nancy couldn't even remember it clearly, it was as if it had all happened in slow motion, with haziness all around her. She just saw Steve's body go flying across the sky, and it was as if nothing else in the world mattered. She stopped thinking about fighting the monster, instead just running to find Steve. 

Nancy figured that when she'd find him, he'd be just like his normal self. He'd crack some joke, flirt a little, and get back to fighting the monster. But there he was, with blood coming from a gnash in his head, unmoving against some rock. 

_No, no, no! This can’t be happening_ , Nancy heard inside her head. That couldn't be Steve, not her Steve, who was always so lighthearted, so resilient. He couldn't just be defeated by some monster.

She couldn't go up to him, she couldn't. Eventually the chief found her, staring at the boy passed out before her. Well, “passed out” was an understatement.

Nancy couldn't move, it was like her entire mind had just shut off. Hopper tried to ask her what had happened, but she couldn't talk, she couldn't move, she couldn't even cry. All she could do was watch as the ambulance came, sirens blasting all around her, but when the paramedics arrived, they already knew it was too late. Steve was gone. 

Mike came to her that night, he said they had killed the monster, it was all over, she didn't have to worry about it anymore. Nancy couldn't bring herself to say anything to him. 

_From now on we tell each other everything._

That's the promise she made with her brother, that's what she had honored with him for the last year. But what was she even supposed to tell him now? He knew what had happened, he was dancing lightly around the subject. She was still too in shock to say anything. 

She hadn't really had the chance to grieve when Barb died. She was instantly thrown into the fight against the Demogorgon, it took her mind off of it, it gave her a place to channel her anger. A part of her couldn't help but wish that they hadn't killed the Thessalhydra that night, because now she had absolutely nothing to do but face the emptiness inside her. 

She had lost her best friend, and her whole one consolation was the boy who became everything to her. Nancy hated to recollect of what an asshole she originally thought he was, because that wasn't who Steve Harrington was. He was the boy who stuck with her when she lost her best friend, who set up a whole funeral for her. He was the boy who made entirely new friends because his old ones were terrible. He was the boy who never stopped loving Nancy, who always did everything he could to take care of her. He was the boy who fought the Thessalhydra because she was going to, and he wanted to protect her, not realizing he was sacrificing himself in the process. 

Mike reached out to her several times, but Nancy shut him out. She knew he just wanted to give back to her, after all she had comforted him for the past year when that girl he took in had died. But now that girl was back, and Mike was happy again. Nancy couldn't help but envy her younger brother, because it just wasn't fair. He had lost two friends too, he lost Will and Eleven, but both of them had come back, and Nancy knew there was no way Barb or Steve would ever return for her. 

So she pushed Mike away, she pushed everyone anyone. Her parents, her friends, everyone, they all tried to help her, but none of them could really understand what she was going through. At the funeral everyone came up to her, giving their apologies, and Nancy hated it. She hated every second at that funeral, with Pastor Charles giving the same speech he did for every funeral, and Nancy couldn't help but roll her eyes. None of his words were _meant_ for Steve, and no one there really knew the boy. They all saw him how they wanted to, as the popular boy who used to be friends with Tommy and Carol, not as the beautiful soul that Nancy knew he was.

The guidance counselor reached out to her at school, claiming she wanted to know if Nancy was okay, but Nancy knew that wasn't the truth. It was senior year, college applications were going out, all the school cared about was that Steve's death didn't cause her grades to drop. They didn't after all, because without Steve, Nancy truly had no one left. She had a few friends she talked to casually, but no one that she _really_ loved. All she had at this point was school, using homework and studying as her sole distraction from the emptiness inside her. 

Soon enough, the world forgot all about Steve. The teachers stopped mentioning him in class, people stopped giving Nancy sympathetic looks in the hallway that were followed by whispers to their friends, and even her family stopped trying to make sure she was okay. Because she sent out her college applications and her grades were high, so why would they have any reason to believe she was collapsing inside?

She kept a smile on her face and hid her head away in textbooks, Nancy pretended to be the person she was before she met Steve, but she knew that person was gone too. She could never go back to being the person she was before she faced the most monstrous beings to come to this dimension, before her best friend had died in the Upside Down, before the boy she loved had been killed with the strike of a Thessalhydra tail. She couldn't go back to being the person she was before all this, so who was she supposed to be now?

The snow started to melt by the end of February, and by March the flowers began to grow again. Nancy figured she should go visit Barb’s grave, she hadn't gone in months anyway. But Nancy had barely been able to bring herself anywhere other than school and home since November, she didn't want to trudge out into the park. 

Still, the emptiness inside her grew. She figured she wouldn't have to worry about it much longer, in a few months she would be going off to college, she could get out of this town. Nancy could start a whole new life, she could forget her past, she could forget Steve. That's what she told herself at night, when the world got quiet and the crickets got loud and nothing was able to stop the fear from settling into her mind that just screamed, _Is it ever going to get better? Am I just going to feel this alone for the rest of my life?_

Forgetting Steve seemed to be the only way she could move on, but she couldn't do it. Every single day she was reminded of him, even after months and months she still had the habit to go and call him when something happened, or to tell him about her day. But he wasn't there for her to talk to anymore, there was no one there for her. 

Guilt ate away at her, so by April she forced herself to go visit Barb’s grave. The meadow was as beautiful as ever, the flowers growing high and blossoming. Nancy knew that Barb and Steve would never blossom again, but she wondered if she would? It didn't feel like she would anymore. 

The grave looked the same as it had last year. The flowers grew around the rock, and other than that, it was ordinary. But it still felt different. Nancy no longer felt the same visiting the grave, but she knew that wasn't because the grave had changed, no, it was because she had changed too much. The world had changed, and it hardened her with it. 

Something about the meadow seemed _empty_. Nancy always knew it was a beautiful place, she always had so many happy memories there, playing with Barb as a child. Something about the flowers were so _full of love_ , they weren't meant to be enjoyed alone. They were meant to be appreciated with a best friend forever by your side, or with a first-love. But Nancy didn't have anyone like that anymore, it was just her, no Barb, no Steve, no anyone. 

She missed Steve, she really did. Nancy wished every day that he would just come back, even for just a second, so she could tell him goodbye. She wanted any second she could get with him, but now she had lost all chances of that. She barely had anything to remember him by. All his clothes that she had taken were thrown out, too painful to keep. His parents had held onto the rest of his belongings, and she couldn't bring herself to visit his grave. The idea that his soulless body lay in the ground six feet beneath her, probably being devoured by maggots, it sent chills up Nancy’s spine.

Maybe that was why she had so much trouble moving on, because she had no real way to remember him. So, staring at Barb’s grave, Nancy knew what she had to do. 

She found a large rock in the trees, and placed it right next to Barb’s. She dug a short hole beneath it, and placed some flowers in the dirt. The purple ones were always Steve's favorite, so Nancy pulled a handful of them from the ground and placed them into the small depression. Then she started to sprinkle the dirt over them, covering it up. 

It wasn't much, and it wasn't a real grave, but it was the best Nancy could do. Barb and Steve never got along, but Nancy loved them both with all her heart, and she knew they loved her back the same. They had more in common than they thought. So their memorials were right besides each other, surrounded by the meadow’s flowers. 

That meadow was never meant to be a graveyard. When 8-year-old Nancy found it, it was just a place to play. She used her imagination to see it as a castle, a courtyard, a ballroom, but never a graveyard. 

She knew now that that was all so naive, because the flowers were the most beautiful things Nancy had ever seen, and beautiful things always have their secrets. 

No person, no flower, no monster is exempt from the darkness of death, and that crack of mortality in the meadow was only the beginning.


End file.
